


The Garden

by halseyblue (PagebyPaige)



Category: Andrew Hozier-Byrne (Musician), Christianity - Fandom, From Eden - Hozier (Music Video), Original Work
Genre: Christianity, Creationism, F/F, F/M, Forbidden Love, Lesbians, Patriarchy, Religion, Religious Themes, The Book of Genesis - Freeform, but I feel obligated to tag it, its not really about all that y’all, probably blasphemy, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 08:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19195672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PagebyPaige/pseuds/halseyblue
Summary: I am in love with the most beautiful girl in the world. She couldn't even bear to look at me, I'm sure -- it's not allowed.





	The Garden

**Author's Note:**

> From Eden // Hozier

She was the definition of resplendent perfection. By her very definition she was flawless; it is the only way she might be described. Yet, she is a slave. She is raised in naïveté and subdued by heartless masters. She chokes daily on the poisonous fabrications oft pushed down her delicate throat. She is dragged along on a lead of deception; knotted around her neck, she has no escape.

He tells her everyday how she is only half his equal. She is reminded that she is a pitiful fraction of her masters, and a vassal of the man from whom she was borne. She has no choice but to follow him through the expanses of his wealth, which she is not permitted to touch. She was Tantalus, forever taunted and punished by celestial cruelty.

I, myself, however, am too Tantalus. The fruits I crave are the glimpses I get of her perfect beauty; always just out of reach, just barely too little. I ache more for what I can see and get cannot reach than for my own sorry state. I wish to dwell in my own pain forever, to never see her nourishing image again if I could just free her from this place.

The puppeteers’ strings are manipulated by her celestial master; she is forever tormented in her own home.

The pain that comes from the tension on her strings rips through the seams that knit together my abhorrent flesh. The seams are woven from her ever-diminishing joy, and I know I will be gutted once she learns the truth.

She feeds the trickle of blood that still carries life through my veins. I am sentenced to the shadows untouched by her aura due to the indomitable brutality of her masters. I crawl to the edge of her light when I can bear my own suffering no longer. 

I watch, the pain she has yet to feel racing through me, as her masters deny her the truth. It is plainly there for her, but she cannot see it through the think veil of lies that hangs around her and everything she knows. 

I reach again the point of pain I can no longer manage alone, and I drag my disgusting limbs into the purity of her glow. It singes every hideous imperfection of my body — excruciating torture for just an ounce of the life she emits.

Her masters fear and despise me, and so all she knows is to loathe me. Her unwitting assistance burns through me, too, with guilt. I feel like a thief, a mongrel sustaining myself on pleasures I have done naught to deserve.

I edge forward, soaking in as much as I dare. The more the light dances over me, the more flames tear through me, cutting sharper and deeper as I pass through her radiant warmth and into the cool brevity of the shade of the forbidden tree. I haul myself up off the ground, flames still licking at me, searing into my bones.

Fading strength propels me towards the fruit and all I can see is her face in sharper detail than I ever could from the shadows. I rip my prize from its branch, cutting off its source of familiarity and life like I will soon do to my muse. The flames now not only tear through my body but so, too, my soul; I feel guilt over ripping her from the life she knows, but my greed is too powerful to allow me to fully burn. I trudge my way further, most of my body limp and useless, towards my love. I get close, closer than I dare, for probably the first and the last time. I hesitate for a second, basking in the feeling of purity I had long since forgotten. Even my own selfish pride is beginning to turn to ash, and I know I can no longer luxuriate in things I don't deserve. I push the fruit into her ankles, getting so close for a split second that the forbidden smell of her makes me instinctively recoil. 

She reaches down absently, feeling for the disturbance at her ankles. As of now, she hasn't any more a care in the world than the time at which my world began to ignite. I am fulfilling prophecy, and corroborating the master I once abandoned. I am about to take the icon of purity and destroy it. Not all she knows is lies -- she is taught I am destined to destroy all that is good around her, and so I shall. I just hope with the one scrap of altruism that hasn't been banished to the depths of my domain that doing so will save her. 

Her fingers close around the fruit and drag me from my reverie. I watch as my last good endeavor is lifted from the ground and toward her lips. I freeze. I know the moment her tongue meets that fruit, she will see me and the flaming world around me. The dark shroud that sheathes me will fall away, and the facades our masters put up will dissolve. I hope she will see what truth remains within me that our masters tried to conceal, and that she sees the truth in our masters as enlightenment rather than slander. There's hardly much of my body left and I feel it shredded when I see the agony paint her face as she sees her true surroundings for the first time. I see the flames reflected in her eyes; the horror at the faces she had been groomed to love. She sees her masters living lavishly in a world built for them, sees herself at last as their slave. I see resistance rise in her eyes.

I watch her muscles tighten with the knot her mind has tied itself into as she processes everything she's seeing. She welcomes the pull of falsehood as it seeks to drag her back into an idealized world. But then, she struggles. Selfishly, I want to think it's because she sees the raw honesty in my eyes. In reality, I think she has a new fear towards her masters that disallows them from reeling her back in. She sees them for how they truly are, regardless of whether she likes what is being reflected back to her. 

She turns to me for the first time, and I can feel myself burning and thriving under her gaze. She steps toward me with purpose, but there is a lingering hesitance that slows her down. I bow my head, bracing for a blow or a scream of disgust. I can't bear the idea of her seeing me, in all my hideousness, and all the hatred she must feel toward me for showing her such a gruesome reality. She advances with more determination. I curl in on myself. She radiates beauty so powerfully it burns my retinas, but I can't look away. 

Here comes the blow. I tense, accepting my fate; if her touch is the last thing I ever feel, I have been redeemed well beyond what I ever could have deserved. The once lush grass smokes around me, and her shadow shields me from the heat. I look up, focusing on her face for one last time before she takes my life in her hands.

But then, she kneels. She lifts my lithe body, trembling, from the charred remains of paradise, and takes me into her arms. I think by now I must already be dead, but by some miracle I have ascended even beyond the heaven I could never reach and into a perfection I never even could have conceived of. She carries me gingerly towards a stream now muddied with soot. I wonder if this is just a cleaner attempt to rid her domain of my presence, but she dips me carefully, as if I have the fragility of a newborn bird, into the chill. Steam rises up off of me, but I have yet to feel the burns, as all I can focus on is her hands beneath me. She lifts me back out of the water and cradles my body to her chest. I look up for a rare opportunity to study her features up close, and as I do she begins to run. I feel safer than I ever have, held snugly between her breasts and her gentle hands. Soon we are tearing through the flame-torn Eden, as real to her as it always has been to me. Soon, we reach my shady edge and she stops by the foliage. 

I realize belatedly that she knows no other place than Eden. I nudge her forward. I expect us to fall through my hole and into the depths of the territory I have been condemned to, but instead as soon as we are in the safety of the shade, the flames behind us fall away, along with the plants surrounding us. Suddenly, we are in a wider, cooler patch of green. She falls to her knees, trembling, and still clutching me to her chest. I feel my muscles instinctively contract, winding my long body around my chest, holding her. I realize shortly after, however, that this must have been what she was warned about: how I would curl around her lungs, choking off her air, stealing away her life. I force my grip to loosen, and I concentrate on morphing into my much more unwieldy human form. 

My skin stretches and my muscles go taut and loose again, and suddenly I am crushing my love. I hurriedly roll to the side, instantly paralyzed by the notion that she may find me even more repulsive now that she knows me as a woman, too. I stare, waiting for the flash of horror to shine back at me in her eyes, or for her to scramble away. Instead, she just holds me, eyes wide and glassy, and stares.

I am even more enraptured by her beauty now, with her lovely arms wrapped around my middle, our breasts nearly touching. My hair falls into my face and I can't bring myself to care until she brushes it away. Her soft touch makes my eyelids flutter, and I never knew I was even capable of so much affection. She parts her lips slightly, and I can't move even an inch, too afraid to break the trance she must be in. 

"Thank you," she whispers in her lyrical voice. I gape. She looks intently into my eyes, saying, "I loved my masters deeply, as I was taught to. But they showed me none of the devotion I can see in your eyes. I have never felt so appreciated as I do right in this moment." All I can muster is a stare. She leans down and softly, gently, presses her lips to the corner of my mouth. Without moving away, she whispers even more softly: "Thank you, for showing me the truth."

My mouth remains hanging open, and she lays her head on my chest, quickly dropping into sleep as her breathing evens out. I'll sort out whatever cruel joke this is some other time -- I refuse to disturb her. 

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos are lovely xx


End file.
